I really wasn’t keen on that, though. I tried to shove her off me, and when that didn’t work, I got really angry and tried to get enough distance between us to take a swing. I don’t think I’ve ever punched anyone else in my life, and if I ever have, it couldn’t have been nearly as hard as I hit Shane.

I feel awful about it to this day. She didn’t really do anything, just stumbled back a little. I think it was more from shock than from pain, though. For all my anger I’d been at the wrong angle to really make the punch effective, and it served more to surprise her than to hurt her. But she still didn’t let me past her.

“I need to see her,” I said again, but by this time I was crying and my words were far more desperate than angry. She just hugged me again and walked me back to where the chairs were, but we didn’t sit down. I would have by then; I was utterly exhausted and had no fight left in me. We just stood there, with her hugging me and me having no idea what planet I was on. “Please let me see her,” I begged eventually, through my tears.

She shook her head and hugged me tighter, almost like she was trying to hold on to herself. I could feel her shaking and it made it all a little too real for me. I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide until Alice came and told me it had all been a horrible nightmare and I needed to start packing my things so we could be ready to fly to Paris.

It didn’t work. I couldn’t disappear, and Shane wouldn’t let me take even a step in the direction of Alice’s room no matter how much I begged. I was still doing that pretty incessantly without really being aware of what I was saying. I couldn’t seem to stop; I felt as if I were about ten different people and all of them were lost.

After what might have been thirty seconds or a hundred years, I tried again to push past Shane and make my way to my wife’s room. Shane wouldn’t let me go, though, and I didn’t really have the desire to fight her. I just really wanted to see Alice.